Cars with personality

Tough and macho or cute and friendly - there's a real art to designing a car's personality.

March 13 2009

Peter McKay

Peugeot 308

Many of us see a face - happy, sour, cheeky, pushy or comic - when we look at the front of a car. It's easy to see why.

Visualise headlights for eyes, grille/air intake for a mouth, bumper as the jaw and maybe the bonnet as the nose.

The shapes and proportions in that "face" - always incorporating the signature grille and badging - can mean the difference between a hit and a dud.

The raccoon face of the latest Ford Performance Vehicles FG model range has become a key identifier. All FPV models except the elite GT E come with the "raccoon" patches or "Alice Cooper eyes".

FPV boss Rod Barrett has no problem with the descriptions. "The faces were intended to make a difference and . . . they have."

It's hard not to smile when you spot an Austin Healey Sprite, with its bug eyes and cheesy grin. Other cars look befuddled, cross-eyed or surprised. Many take on the visage of a cartoon character or animal.

Notoriously and appropriately for one of Detroit's famous flops, the Ford Edsel has the face of someone sucking on a lemon.

Using imagery and similes, designers frequently produce a complex, deeply analytical explanation of why they have created the face of a new car.

The face is crucial to a car's acceptance by consumers. The face is often the personality of the car, and therefore the driver.

Advertisement

An aggressive countenance is an easy design task. Look at the Chrysler 300C, Jeeps, Toyota Prado, Ferrari F430 and the current Audis. The difficult ones are the warm and welcoming faces, where designers chase those attributes without making them overtly feminine. Look at the Fiat 500, which manages to be open and engaging but not just appealing to women. The Nissan Micra, on the other hand, is more overtly feminine.

The designers of the Holden Commodore VE - the most popular car of 2008 - didn't set out to create a car face resembling a human or animal. Holden design boss Tony Stolfo acknowledges a "facial presence is critical to the brand" and that stylists tune the front look to the image and positioning of the particular model.

"How much masculinity we put into it depends on whether it is a performance model. And for a premium Commodore model, we usually add jewellery like chrome," Stolfo says.

"The target car is based on customer requirements. We do our research on who the customer will be for a new car. If it's for a younger, female-slanted market, we may want to make it a cute looker. But for a performance version, the face will be tuned to give it a more aggressive look, with a larger 'mouth' opening. But the five-point grille will be similar across the range."

Stolfo says styling tastes differ around the world but cars everywhere are assuming more international faces thanks to the large numbers of imports.

Modern technology has given design teams broader scope - headlights can now be of any shape, for example.

Designers are aware of the tastes of target buyers but they also take into account factors such as crash and pedestrian impact legislation, structural requirements, cooling issues, material choices and aesthetics. Manufacturers understand about 70 per cent of drivers identify and critique vehicles by the headlights and grille.

Stylists like to apply something unique - a point of difference - to the face that allows punters to identify it at a glance. Some car buffs can easily pick a car in their rear-view mirror at night from the shape of blazing headlights. Makers have usually endeavoured to fashion a cheerful, inviting face. Or, at the top end, something regal. Lately though, many are out there with a more aggressive, meaner look.

Filmmakers such as Pixar and Disney have played with the idea that cars have humanoid faces (and voices and personalities) but now extensive research suggests this is much more than Hollywood's vivid imagination.

A study, co-authored by researchers from universities in Vienna and Florida, has confirmed many of us are hard-wired to see human facial features in the fronts of cars. We also simultaneously affix various personality traits to cars - a modern experience driven by prehistoric psyches.

"The study confirmed with some rigour what many people have already felt - that cars seem to have consistent personality traits . . . and that this is similar to the way people perceive facial expressions," Dennis Slice, an associate professor at Florida State's department of scientific computing, told Science Daily. Slice says the study could link the perception of cars to aspects of their physical structure in a way that allows makers to style a car that would project, say, aggression, anger or masculinity or the opposite traits.

One-third of those participating in the study associated a human or an animal face with at least 90 per cent of the late-model cars shown.

All but 4 per cent of people in the study agreed on whether a car looked dominant or submissive.

Slice noted cars scoring high in the so-called power category had long straight bonnets, pronounced lower car bodies relative to the windshields and more angular headlights that hinted at a frown.

Cars perceived as childlike, submissive, female and friendly, had a smiley visage with headlights with their upper edge relatively close to the midline and had an upward shift of the car's lateral-most points.

Adherents of the tough car-styling culture are giving the psychologists plenty to ponder. Those in the study showed a preference for power vehicles, those that were macho, angry and arrogant.

A trawl back through time quickly confirms the thought that designing a car with a face with instant appeal has been an inexact science, even at the best of addresses. BMW, Porsche, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz have had some models with faces that only mothers could embrace.

With an image based largely around families and safety, Volvo isn't rushing to market with scowling faces on its vehicles. Peter Horbury, who was responsible for the look of several of the Swedish brand's current vehicles, says because Volvo is pitched at owners who expect its cars will protect them, he opted for styling that suggested strength - the bonnet and fenders scalloped to suggest broad shoulders.

It has been suggested that the "strong but reserved" front of Volvo's XC90 crossover vehicle has a touch of the late tough-guy actor Charles Bronson.

Not all makers are hell-bent on going on the warpath. The Japanese seem content to put on a happy face. Honda says it likes to think its cars are smiling and the world's best-selling sports car, Mazda's MX-5, has a joyful countenance.

In its most recent incarnation, the Mazda stylists have allowed the MX-5 to grow up a little and given it a guy-friendly sly grin.

A memorable face - and instant recognition - is what it's all about.

Koalas, frogs and sharks . . . they're all ugly ducklings

Rolls-Royce has one of the most grand, distinctive, signature grilles anywhere. But attempting to blend heritage with modernity on the latest Phantom has been an aesthetic disaster - those tiny headlamps leave the proportions all wrong, and the facial features suggest a boxer who has taken one too many punches.

When Subaru introduced its last-generation Impreza in September 2005, we were told the three-part grille or face of the car reflected an aerospace-themed look, with wings either side and a fuselage in the middle. The punters had other thoughts and this model is now universally known as the "koala nose".

The face of the current Honda CR-V soft-roader suggests a touch of Nicole Kidman's big prosthetic nose from The Hours.

The new Mazda3 could have some of Lightning McQueen's Disney genes.

Depending on how you interpret the face of Peugeot's 308, it may have more than a passing resemblance to Kermit the Frog. Or the phizog of a yawning Bob Carr.

A new Toyota Tarago whizzing by leaves the observer with the distinct impression it has just charged out into the bright sunlight without its Ray-Bans.

There's a touch of Kevin Rudd's pursed lips and glasses in a close to 15-year-old Ford Festiva.

The bespectacled John Howard mush could have been the inspiration (yes, we know it's a stretch) for a 1960s Chevrolet Bel Air.

The Nissan Micra conjures up memories of Terry-Thomas, while Jaguar's X-Type looks like Don Knotts, which probably hasn't helped its sales appeal.

The Mitsuoka Orochi, heralded (way too ambitiously) as Japan's answer to Ferrari, is unsightly all over, with a cartoonish visage closer to gummy shark than Prancing Horse.

Mercifully, these days there are not too many automotive Jocelyn Wildensteins about, although the SsangYong Actyon comes closest.